I can hear ‘skunn’ and 'skawn' in my mind's ear. I have no idea what ‘skonn’ is supposed to sound like. I am willing to entertain the notion that my mind's ear and dxb's mind's ear are not hearing 'skawn' the same way.

Skonn, to me, has 'sco' as in Scot and a sharp 'n' on the end formed with the tip of the tongue curled up to touch the roof of the mouth rather than just behind the front upper teeth. Skawn has the lips pushed forward to make the 'aw' sound as in prawn or born.

Describing on paper what you can hear perfectly well in your head is never easy and I am aware that there are conventions for doing so with wierd upside down 'e's and omegas, but I am really not familiar or comfortable with them. I should be - apologies. I should stay away from such issues!

As to "scunner"; in some Eng. dialects, this word means "to skin", as in to remove the skin from an animal (after you've killed it, of course !)

A metaphorical usage is, "Yon stink's enough to scunner a toad!" - i.e, the stench is powerful enough to remove a toad's skin.I just can't remember in which part of England I heard this: I think it was North Midlands - Nottingham/ Derbyshire/ Staffordshire sort of area.

Part of the problem is that of agreeing what they mean. This as in prawn or born, as the lovely AnnaS so ably pointed out, makes no sense to someone for whom the vowel sounds in the two words are completely different. We need a site with sound files.

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